Today students conducted MAP Testing and were therefore on a slightly modified scheduled. Nevertheless, we continued with our previous day's activity in the first half of class, the majority of students requiring additional time to complete the exercise in Creative Thinking and Problem Solving. Those collaborative groups who were able to arrive at a solution early were asked to begin brainstorming and planning a similar "Breakout" game of their own to be administered to other classes. Upon completion of the Breakout puzzle, all students reflected on what ways in which this Creative Thinking exercise are similar and applicable to science. What skills, lessons, and strategies can be learned and applied in our everyday lives from this activity? Students produced very insightful responses and recorded these in their notebooks.
Secondly, we began diving in to the annual Precipitation Prognostication activity with students by defining each term (and identifying related words with shared roots and prefixes). A document with the same title was shared with students on Google Classroom and the information contained in it reviewed out loud by the teacher. We discussed the distinction between weather and climate, and generated a list of variables that may affect both. For homework tonight, students were asked to watch or listen to a local weather report to carefully identify all of the factors or variables that a professional meteorologist sees fit to report on daily. Combined with our class list, students were to prioritize the top 3 factors that they predict will be most significant and have the greatest predictive power. These are the variables they will focus on tomorrow when we begin examining the data.
Secondly, we began diving in to the annual Precipitation Prognostication activity with students by defining each term (and identifying related words with shared roots and prefixes). A document with the same title was shared with students on Google Classroom and the information contained in it reviewed out loud by the teacher. We discussed the distinction between weather and climate, and generated a list of variables that may affect both. For homework tonight, students were asked to watch or listen to a local weather report to carefully identify all of the factors or variables that a professional meteorologist sees fit to report on daily. Combined with our class list, students were to prioritize the top 3 factors that they predict will be most significant and have the greatest predictive power. These are the variables they will focus on tomorrow when we begin examining the data.